To remain competitive, Cuban advises ditching degrees that teach specific skills and opting for degrees that teach you how to think in a big picture way, like philosophy.

"As robots take over routine jobs, we need people who can think creatively, imaginatively, logically, and laterally. Acquiring a narrow 'skillset' of the kind society increasingly demands will, in fact, leave students not equipped for the future, but vulnerable to it."

"What a continuously giving gift philosophy has been... If you can extract, and abstract, underlying assumptions or superordinate principles, or reason through to the implications of arguments, you can identify and address issues in a myriad of fields."

Most of management theory is inane, writes the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead.

Courses like "Why Capitalism?" push students to ponder business in a broader context, and address a common complaint of employers, who say recent graduates are trained to solve single problems but miss the big picture.

In an era in which chronic unemployment seems to demand hard skills, some students are turning to an ancient study that they say prepares them not for a job, but for the multiple jobs they expect to hold during their lifetimes.